In just three to five years, artificial general intelligence (AGI), technology that equals or exceeds human intelligence and cognitive capacities, could result in unemployment rates of as much as 15% to 20%.
AI’s rise is a recurring theme at “Future Investment Initiative Summit” in Riyadh, where business, technology, and government leaders are debating the technology’s application and social impact as well as the worth of AI companies.
However, Dan Schulman, managing partner of Valor Capital Group, an investment firm based in New York, was one of the first to address the issue at hand: the increasing likelihood that AGI will result in joblessness in specific industries.
As has been the case throughout the summit, artificial intelligence was used once more when Sophie, an AI avatar, answered a query regarding the exorbitant valuation of AI firms.
“With a USD 600 billion gap between AI market expectations and actual revenue, according to Sequoia, the current valuations are excessively inflated,” she said, as reported by Zawya.
However, the valuation issue was dismissed by Schulman as a “surface issue” in contrast to the urgent need to address possible societal issues brought on by technology.
The former president and CEO of online payment company PayPal predicted that artificial intelligence (AI) would significantly alter their organisational structures, replacing all of the fundamental software programming, 80% of customer service positions, and 50% of legal teams based on his interviews with 50 leading American CEOs.
According to Schulman, early tests at PayPal had demonstrated that employing AI copilots to program software increased productivity by 35%. The technology could also replace 50% of bank analysts.
“CEOs I spoke to said they will take half to 60% of productivity savings into productivity, more output happening, but almost half will result in op-ex savings,” he said.
According to him, this raised the possibility of 15%-20% unemployment due to AI, which is extremely problematic in democracies since it results in lower tax revenue and, consequently, fewer public services.